In the 2024-25 school year, Loganville Christian Academy debuted our Essentials to Healthcare Class. The students hit the ground running back in August with the curriculum. From being caught in a pickle just 10 days into the school year to monitoring stuffed animals, our healthcare students have learned a lot in the inaugural run of the class.
Heading up the class is Mrs. Rylee Harrison. Eleven students make up the initial group: Addison Carruthers, Savanna Cowart, Hailey Crenshaw, Dorian Dewitz, Grace Fleming, Addie Godfrey, Mattie Hewatt, Mackenzie Lawley, Emery Loyless, Kalli Warren, and Emma Wilcox. They’ve been learning concepts and lessons related to healthcare and anatomy.
Among the multitude of principles taught are teamwork, employability, role of ethics related to healthcare, human anatomy, diseases, disorders, the importance of patient care and empathy as well as a wide variety of medical terminology — prefixes and suffixes — to help build understanding of the medical/healthcare language.
Mrs. Harrison utilized a variety of labs and projects to apply what the students learned in real world situations.
First, they started out with a lab that involved pickles — yes, you read that right — on Aug. 15. Students began learning about all of the body system’s functions and purposes along with different diseases and disorders related to them. Additionally, students had to assess ways to diagnose those diseases and have treatment options. Mrs. Harrison decided to use pickles for the Autopsy Lab for students to apply the medical terminology — directional terms, body planes and body cavities — to a more real world situation. Pickles allowed students to better see internal structures “organs” and it was good practice in cutting.
Between the pickle lab and field trips, students simulated different fracture patterns during the skeletal system unit. In this lab they utilized carrots to create six different fracture patterns, diagnosed those fractures by name, and discussed care and treatment for each. They also discussed how each fracture typically occurs in terms of events/actions, simulating some to the best of their ability.
Next, in November, the class went on two field trips — one to Piedmont Rockdale Hospital and the second to Athens Technical College.
At Piedmont, students were exposed to technology utilized in healthcare and potential career opportunities. The trip focused on learning about robotic surgical equipment surgeons use in the OR to perform surgery along with diagnostic tools utilized to diagnose lung cancer. A big hit for the students was getting to operate the Davinci and ION robotic surgical equipment!
On the Athens Tech visit, students explored the college’s nursing program. They experienced the clinical lab with a few college students and professors leading head-to-toe assessments, sterile gloving, and listening to heart, lung, and bowel sounds on high fidelity mannequins. Students were also introduced to a simulation lab (a mannequin attached to a monitor), and a birthing simulation lab plus they toured the classroom setting of the college.
The final project for our healthcare students was simulating a doctor’s office/clinic prior to Spring Break. Before the day of the project, however, students went through a real world experience by interviewing for the job they each wanted in the clinic, receiving a job offer letter, and discussing the details of the project in a couple of roundtable discussions. Students were then tasked with creating wristbands, compiling every patient’s chart, making decorations, building an x-ray machine, and much more.
It was called, “The Little Lions Clinic.” Our first grade students brought their stuffed animals into the clinic where they went through check-in, triage, visited the doctors, diagnostics, and were then discharged. A large portion of individuals on our campus came by to check out the clinic and it was a huge success.
Away from the classroom, the healthcare students have assisted with our school’s blood drives, were medics for Lower School Field Day on Friday, April 26, and many other ways have they put their skills to the test.
By the end of the school year, the students in the class will be trained in First Aid and Stop The Bleed and certified in CPR and AED.
Mrs. Harrison is ecstatic about offering this class for year No. 2 in the 2025-26 school year. She does not foresee any alterations to the curriculum after a year in, but only to continue pushing the envelope.
“The core content will remain consistent, but the course will adapt slightly based on the interests of the students. My desire is to ensure my students are learning broadly about healthcare, the body systems, diseases, treatments, etc. but also getting targeted exposures to a variety of fields to aid in finding fields they are passionate about as well as fields they potentially may not enjoy,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I believe this is important as they begin thinking about the future and what they want to go to college for.”
